Dear Editor

It is important that all those who live in Bridstow and Wilton take the upcoming opportunity to express their views on the draft Neighbourhood Plan which is now out for consultation.

Residents may be tempted to assume that, as the process of bringing the Plan to this stage has taken more than five years, what has emerged must be a document which has received extensive consideration by the Parish Council. This is actually far from the case: councillors have mostly had little substantial involvement in the preparation process and the draft is largely the work of an external consultant; members of the previous (never formally elected) Parish Council were strongly discouraged from any public discussion of the draft before its adoption; and, requests by the councillors who were elected in May to debate its content have been denied. 

This all matters greatly because the decisions about where housing development is to go are hugely contentious within the local community and the Plan content is potentially far more important to residents than any other decision the Parish Council is ever likely to be called on to make. 

There are significant problems with the current Plan, including strong doubts about whether a number of the proposed development sites are likely ever to be deliverable, a key criterion which will need to be satisfied if the Plan is ever to be adopted. Several of the sites involved are subject to substantial constraints because of access / highways - or in one case environmental health - issues. In at least one or two cases there are also issues about whether, or when, the owners, or potential future owners, are even likely to take forward the potential developments involved if the Plan is approved, as opposed to benefiting from having the option of doing so. The associated risk is that, even if the Plan does get adopted, the housing target for the Parish will not be met and the process will just need to start again before too long.

Residents will no doubt be particularly concerned about the local environmental impacts of the substantial levels of development which are proposed. They are mostly unlikely to be reassured by - and may also wish to comment on - the latest draft of Herefordshire Council’s Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Plan which makes the extraordinary claim that most of the proposed developments would have neutral or positive environmental effects.

Hopefully, the ‘noise’ associated with a General Election will not distract residents from giving the issues raised by the Plan the depth of consideration which has so far been lacking.  

Councillor George Barrett

Bridstow